Pune: Last rites of Anuj Bidve performed

Pune, Jan 8: The last rites of Anuj Bidve, the 23- year-old student who was killed in Britain in an apparent case of hate-crime, were performed here on Saturday, Jan 7.

Scores of people including his relatives, friends and neighbours attended the funeral procession from Chandan Nagar to Yeravada on the outskirts of the city, after the body was brought from Manchester by his parents today. The Bidves, who lost their only son in an unprovoked attack by a 20-year-old British youth in Manchester on December 26, were inconsolable as the body was taken out of the house for the last journey.

Anuj's father Subhash Bidve had said while in Britain that he had confidence in the judicial system there, and hoped that such crimes would not recur as a large number of students go to Britain from India for higher studies. "Our world is finished," Subhash had said while in Britain to collect his son's body.

A Manchester police team visited the family here early this week to apprise of the sequence of events that led to the tragic death of Anuj, who was doing his MS at Lancaster University. Pune mayor Mohansingh Rajpal, who attended the funeral, said there was a need to counsel the students going abroad about the racist undercurrents in the foreign countries.